Sunday February 8th 2015

The soft chime pulled him out of velvet, shadowed dreams. Unwinding the sheets from his legs, Cesare looked over at the still sleeping Viktor with a slight smile. He might be deadlier than a psychopathic tiger, but he wouldn’t last long on the streets with a habit like that. A soldier learned to sleep whenever he could, survivors knew sleeping only let the creepers close.

Stepping quietly into the bathroom, Cesare took advantage of his early wake up to soak in the hot water. Finishing the hot shower, he changed, flipping his hood up before opening the door.

Sitting on the bed, cradling his head, Viktor looked up with miserably blood shot eyes. “I thought kids liked to sleep in?”

Smirking, Cesare bypassed the man's bed. “Most do, some don’t. Lucky you, I like mornings.”

Grunting his opinion, the man slammed the bathroom door. A minute later the room echoed with Viktor’s curses when he found only cold water. While the man was busy, Cesare equipped for a long day. The switchblade slipped up his sleeve, the ‘Little Red Gun That Could’ going into the small of his back. That left the surprises he’d cooked up in the cottage.

By the time Viktor came out of the bathroom, Cesare was ready. Viktor had changed his clothes and for the first time, he wasn't in jeans and a wife beater. While the knee-length denim duster wasn't much of a change, it was something.

Pulling open his backpack, Viktor slipped weapons under his jacket. Cesare counted two guns on dual shoulder holsters, three knives, one expanding baton, and a Taser along with two grenades. Viktor grunted as the last knife went into his worn combat boot.

Another time and place, Cesare might have wondered why the man was coming hard. But that was before he’d seen the shroud of violence that followed the Umbrae Lunae. Cesare had only been part of the world of moon shadows for a short time, but he'd learned there was no such thing as overkill.

Parking on a back street, the two of them walked onto 6th Ave. Taking a long look up and down the street, the two shrugged, splitting up to see if they could spot the guy. Cesare looked for the telltale sign of a claiming. A good street corner was the difference between a full belly and starving, they were jealously guarded and defended.

As afternoon came, he could see the guys working corners. A few were doing it old school with signs and cans. But the new guys were smarter, they had dollar store candy bars and a spiel about school and sports. Selling a dollar candy bar for three bucks, they pocketed half, the rest going to the handler. Others worked the stranded con, they'd lost their ride and needed a little something to get them home. Hustlers, liars, and users, he could spot them all, he'd been there, worked the marks in a daily fight to stay one step ahead of the gutter.

Sitting cross legged with a can in front of him, the kid held down a corner. A jacket of muddy black blanketed his body, face and hands peeking from its voluminous folds. All sharp cheek bones and almond eyes, he was folded up on himself, trying to make himself as small as possible. While that worked for rabbits, it made for small tips.

Taking a detour, Cesare picked up two sandwiches and a couple of sodas from the market. Sitting against the wall next to the boy, he leaned back into the concrete. Cesare kept distance between them, an unconscious gesture born from years on the streets where room to run was life and death. This kid wasn’t a fighter, not with tension pulling his face tight, feet braced for a quick run. Just a child out of his depth, waiting for someone to strip his soul of gold, leaving the boy to drown in the shit that remained.

“You want my spot?” There was an exotic lilt to his voice. The kind of accent you get when you're used to speaking a liquid tongue.

Cesare popped the top on his soda while handing over a can and a sandwich. “Nope,” Cesare said, taking a sip of his soda, watching the passing marks. Young or old, it didn't matter, their eyes glided over the two nobodies without a flicker of give a fuck. Garbage was sneered at, dog shit avoided, but the homeless are invisible.

The boy opened the sandwich, scarfing it down in big gulps without a word of thanks. You don’t hold onto fresh on the streets, you eat it. Food you eat, is food that can't be taken.

Cesare sipped his soda, the cold wind swirling around him. He’d spent a lot of time sitting on streets like this. It was strange, nowadays he didn’t have a spare moment. Girls, training, weapons, tactics, schoolwork, there wasn’t a second to catch a breath, let alone sit and stare at the world.

But his life hadn't been lived that way. When you’re on the streets, you don’t have anyone that wants you around, so you don’t have anywhere to be. All you had was time and the promise of more time, doing nothing, being nothing to no one.

Maybe that was the real curse of homelessness, the time. When you're on the street, you had all the time in the world to realize you were worthless. You watch others live while you rot. They have everything you don't, a place to stay, steady meals, friends, and happiness. You're left with endless hours to nurse your self-loathing until it's strong enough to hold you at night.

“So … why you here?” the boy asked, sandwich long gone with the soda on its way.

The kid had only been on the streets for a year or so. He was still a baby cutting his teeth, not yet at the point of having to make the devils bargain. The kind of choice that had you looking in the mirror with a jagged knife deciding which bits of your soul you can live without. No, he hadn’t reached that point yet.

Keeping his eyes off the skittish boy, Cesare watched the street. “I was all set. I'd spend the weekend working on campus with a beautiful woman. Then a cock sucker of a teacher told me I had to help track down some wonder kid.” The boy’s muscles tensed at Cesare’s words. “He dragged my ass all the way to this shit hole, spending my night prowling the Jungle looking for someone that didn’t want to be found. I haven't seen any sign of the boy we’re looking for, do you?”

Searching Cesare's face, the boy relaxed under the offer there. “I don’t know, why you want him?"

Cesare rolled the soda can between the palms of his hand. “I go to a school called Primrose.” The boy jerked at the name as if it was an electrical prod applied to his ass. “They say he’s from a dead clan, want to use him to revive his clan and get a toe hold in Japan. Can’t say I care. You see, I think people deserve to make their own choices.”

Looking down the street, the boy's eyes darted over the crowd, looking for Viktor. “What …” Painfully swallowing, the boy continued, “I’ve heard of Primrose and the Mistress. I always wanted to go but my family said it was too dangerous. The Venator's ran us over half the world, we lived by keeping low and out of sight.”

“Not really an option for you anymore. They know you're alive, the hunters are never going to stop.” Cesare smiled at an old woman who put a dollar in the boys can.

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” The boy said, eyes lost.

The kid folded in on himself, small frame collapsing under depressions grimy weight. Despair and melancholy had been with Cesare longer than steady meals. They were old friends, tried and true, when everything had left him but the hunger gnawing at his bones, they’d been there. After a while, they'd become part of him, the skittering sound of their legs burrowing into his heart a lullaby that ended his days.

“You have a choice,” Cesare said, darkness swimming in his voice, tin can giving a low, hurt whine as it resonated with focused power. “You can walk away, and I’ll tell teach I’ve never seen you.” The boy got up to leave. “If you walk that road, you’ll live your life alone without anyone to warm your soul beside. Eating out of garbage’s and scrounging for clothes, fighting off the fleas and ticks as you choke in your own filth. You’ll welcome them as an escape when they come for you, desperate to end the self-loathing that rules your soul.”

The boy’s face paled. Facing those dark, almond eyes, Cesare let the boy read the truth of his words. Cesare had lived it, been where the kid was going, faced the demons he was setting himself to battle, and had the scars to prove it. The life the boy was choosing wasn’t the easy answer it looked like, it was just another kind of hell.

“Option two, you come with me. You take my hand and I’ll help you. I won’t fight for you, I won’t be your knight in shining armor, but I’ll be a friend, and that’s more than you’ll find on the street. Even if you get nothing more than that, when they pin you to the wall, I’ll be there with you,” Cesare said, meeting the kids troubled eyes.

Cesare would have loved to have said he was doing this for the kid, but he wasn't that kind of guy. This kid could be important, was important enough to send one of the best fighters in the world out to track and bring back. Anastasia could find a use for him, the kid wasn’t much right now, but he wouldn’t always be nothing.

“I’ve never had a friend before,” the boy said, eyes shining with unshed tears.

Shrugging, Cesare looked down the street. “Don’t worry, I’m a shit friend to have, so we should be even.” Laughing, the boy sat back with a new relaxation rolling over his body.

“My name is Yoshisune Doku no Hane,” the boy said, holding out his hand.

“Cesare Nietzsche.” Cesare said simply, as he took the boys hand. The boy frowned, trying to place him into the system of clans and alliances that formed the Umbrae Lunae world. “I don’t have anyone. No clan, no parents. Just me.”

His words stripped the last of Yoshisune’s worry. The kid’s words came softly as they watched the world pass. “My parents were caught by the Venator a year ago.”

“I keep hearing that word,” Cesare said, finishing his soda.

Yoshisune looked over at him in surprise before realization wiped it away. “Ah, you're damnati. The Venator are the hunters of the Umbrae Lunae. The clan’s, Imperium’s, and Sceptrum’s could never agree on how undesirables should be handled, so they didn’t bother. The Venator were born in need. Bounty Hunters, killers, thugs, and criminals, they hunt for money and pleasure.” Fear sparked the boy’s eyes. “Some of them are deadly, others no more than low rent thugs. The contract goes out, calling the jackals to the feast.”

Shaking his head, the boy crushed his empty can, fear transforming into anger. “They’re not really a group, the name's their profession. Some have honor but most only care about the money. Guilty or innocent, it's all the same. They're bound by no rules, no one polices them, no one cares what they do to the cast offs.”

Why pay for cops when you couldn’t agree on what to police? Instead, let it be known a person had wronged you, and were willing to pay to see them dead. There'd always be killers willing to put someone down for a dollar.

Yoshisune’s eyes faded into the past. “They came in the night, a little over a year ago. Breaking down the doors, wearing gas masks and rubber suits, they opened up on the house with guns while others moved in with swords. My mother had prepared a way out, a small tunnel dug under the house. I wormed my way through the dirt, chased by the screams of my family. I hit the streets and kept on running.” His eyes slowly came back to the present. “You know what it’s like to hate yourself more than the people who killed your family?”

“No. My family didn't want me. But I know what it’s like to hate yourself, I know what it’s like to wake up and want to carve into your own flesh because it’s the only way to settle the rage. I know the feel of hate as it grinds into your heart day after day.” His laugh was low, threaded with squirming knowledge. “Oh, I know how to hate with the kind of purity of the born again.”

The boy shuddered back from the bared malice. Cesare had a depth of hate that knew no limits, it burned and ate with the force of the sun. Yoshisune's words were pulled on a wave of desperation. “How do you live with it?”

“You don’t, it never goes away.” The boy reeled back at the truth’s simple horror. “Self-hatred is the price paid for violating the primal truth, to be true to ourselves. A reminder that the person you owe the most, the person you should always love, is yourself. What you did, you’ll never be able to forgive yourself for, and that’s how it should be.” Pausing, Cesare watched the words strip the kid’s illusions away, leaving only raw flesh in their wake.

We're fed platitudes and lies about how we deserve happiness. That it’s how you live after a mistake that matters, and the mistake itself can be made up for. It’s bullshit. You fuck up and you bear the pain for the rest of your fucking life. You don’t try to get rid of it, that’s the price of your mistake. That’s what having honor is. To fess up to your crimes, even the ones against yourself, and bear that burden until your meat rots. Anyone that tries to take that away from you is trying to make you less than you are.

“The burden's yours, and you’ll bear it until it crushes you. It can be a rock that pushes you down or a sword that prods you forward. Use it to get strong, use it to make sure you never betray yourself again.” The words settled on the torn wounds of the boy’s soul like the bandages they were.

They weren’t pretty, and they weren’t nice, but they were true. Truth is a fey thing with a luster all its own, a cruelty lies can’t own. When a person tells you a personal truth, you can’t help but stop as the words resound in your soul. They bounce around your heart, coming back to you distorted by your life. They dive and flutter in the air, finding roost’s in the eves of your heart, becoming your truth.